The Galleria Nazionale

The Galleria Nazionale, opened in Rome in 1883, was transferred to Valle Giulia for the Universal Exhibition of 1911. It is located in the monumental building of neoclassical inspiration and Art Nouveau style, built by architect Cesare Bazzani.

It houses one of the largest art collections, about 20,000 works including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations that bear witness to the main artistic movements from the nineteenth century to the present day: from Neoclassicism to Impressionism, from Divisionism to the historical avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, from Futurism and Surrealism to the most conspicuous nucleus of works of Italian art between the '20s and '40s, from the Novecento movement to the so-called Roman School.

As part of the special autonomy acquired in 2014 with the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities and Tourism reform, the Gallery began an extensive reorganization. The collections were reinterpreted, and the layout was rethought, first in The Lasting, the interval and the duration, then in the principal exhibition Time is Out of Joint.

Inaugurated on Monday 10 October 2016, Time is out of joint completes the extensive transformation, reorganization, and rearrangement of the National Gallery. It returns to the public completely renovated spaces, a profound reinterpretation of its collections, and allows the Museum to experiment with different exhibition practices and new keys to interpretation.

The exhibition, which quotes the lines from William Shakespeare's Hamlet "The time is out of joint," probes the elasticity of the concept of duration, a non-linear but stratified time, which seems to put into action the dilemma of the art historian Hans Belting 'the end of the history of art or the freedom of art.'

Historical linearity is abandoned for a synchronic view of the works as sediments of the museum's long life: Antonio Canova, Alexander Calder, Giacomo Balla, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Paul Cézanne, Giorgio De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Renato Guttuso, Francesco Hayez, Vasilij Kandinskij, Gustav Klimt, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, Giorgio Morandi, Liliana Moro, Robert Morris, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Pellizza, Auguste Rodin, Cy Twombly, Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol.

Cover photo: Redazione Turismo Roma